Farmers Market Haul

Today was Farmers Market day, and I am still admiring my purchases. Eventually, of course, we will eat them; for now they are art.

Above are the heirloom tomatoes that will become BLTs, and be eaten standing over the sink with a shaker of Kosher salt.

The cherry and grape tomatoes will turn into Campanelle with Tomatoes and Feta. Some will probably be scarfed up before that happens.

Herbs: Rosemary, Mint and Cilantro.

These tiny little peppers (about an inch long) were grown by a family of Hmong farmers that have beautiful produce. I’m not sure what I’ll do with these, but I got them all for a dollar, and I’m betting that they’d be great stemmed and cooked with some onion, garlic and a tomato over some brown rice.

Martha Stewart is always flashing her multi-colored Araucana eggs around, and I’ve always wanted to have some. Today, the farmer from whom I usually buy eggs gave these to me along with a carton of brown eggs, then looked in the carton, apologized that these were blue, and went to get me another carton of brown. I told him I would LOVE to have the blue ones, and brought them home to admire them. Actually, I’m sort of worshipping them.

This is just an interesting assortment of regular hot peppers, which we use for all sorts of things.

I thought you would like to know that I recently cooked a spaghetti sauce based on your recipe. I modified it to fit what ingredients we had available and then added ground meat because that’s how my mom makes it. It turned out not only edible, but good! Thanks for the encouragement. I’ll be back to try more!

Hey, I’m all about the modification. That’s how you really learn to cook, anyway. In real life, I always put meat in my spaghetti sauce. You can make it just with “staples” if you really have nothing else in the house, but I am feeding carnivores, and they like some ground beef and/or Italian sausage in their sauce. Thanks for the update – sounds like you’re off to a great start!